The present application relates to blade materials useful in an ink jet printing apparatus, including a thermal ink jet printing apparatus, and specifically to a blade material useful in an ink jet printing wiper blade, used therein to remove ink and other debris from nozzle faces of ink jet printheads. In preferred embodiments, the wiper blade is a polyether urethane.
Ink jet printing systems generally are of two types: continuous stream and drop-on-demand. In continuous stream ink jet systems, ink is emitted in a continuous stream under pressure through at least one orifice or nozzle. The stream is perturbed, causing it to break up into droplets at a fixed distance from the orifice. At the break-up point, the droplets are charged in accordance with digital data signals and passed through an electrostatic field which adjusts the trajectory of each droplet in order to direct it to a gutter for recirculation or a specific location on a recording medium. In drop-on-demand systems, a droplet is expelled from an orifice directly to a position on a recording medium in accordance with digital data signals. A droplet is not formed or expelled unless it is to be placed on the recording medium.
Since drop-on-demand systems require no ink recovery, charging, or deflection, the system is much simpler than the continuous stream type. There are three types of drop-on-demand ink jet systems. One type of drop-on-demand system has as its major components an ink filled channel or passageway having a nozzle on one end and a piezoelectric transducer near the other end to produce pressure pulses. The relatively large size of the transducer prevents close spacing of the nozzles, and physical limitations of the transducer result in low ink drop velocity. Low drop velocity seriously diminishes tolerances for drop velocity variation and directionality, thus impacting the system""s ability to produce high quality copies. Drop-on-demand systems which use piezoelectric devices to expel the droplets also suffer the disadvantage of a slow printing speed.
Another type of drop-on-demand system is known as acoustic ink printing. As is known, an acoustic beam exerts a radiation pressure against objects upon which it impinges. Thus, when an acoustic beam impinges on a free surface (i.e., liquid/air interface) of a pool of liquid from beneath, the radiation pressure which it exerts against the surface of the pool may reach a sufficiently high level to release individual droplets of liquid from the pool, despite the restraining force of surface tension. Focusing the beam on or near the surface of the pool intensifies the radiation pressure it exerts for a given amount of input power. Acoustic ink printers typically comprise one or more acoustic radiators for illuminating the free surface of a pool of liquid ink with respective acoustic beams. Each of these beams usually is brought to focus at or near the surface of the reservoir (i.e., the liquid/air interface). Furthermore, printing conventionally is performed by independently modulating the excitation of the acoustic radiators in accordance with the input data samples for the image that is to be printed. This modulation enables the radiation pressure which each of the beams exerts against the free ink surface to make brief, controlled excursions to a sufficiently high pressure level for overcoming the restraining force of surface tension. That, in turn, causes individual droplets of ink to be ejected from the free ink surface on demand at an adequate velocity to cause them to deposit in an image configuration on a nearby recording medium. The acoustic beam may be intensity modulated or focused/defocused to control the ejection timing, or an external source may be used to extract droplets from the acoustically excited liquid on the surface of the pool on demand. Regardless of the timing mechanism employed, the size of the ejected droplets is determined by the waist diameter of the focused acoustic beam. Acoustic ink printing is attractive because it does not require the nozzles or the small ejection orifices which have caused many of the reliability and pixel placement accuracy problems that conventional drop on demand and continuous stream ink jet printers have suffered.
Still another type of drop-on-demand system is known as thermal ink jet, or bubble jet, and produces high velocity droplets and allows very close spacing of nozzles. The major components of this type of drop-on-demand system are an ink filled channel having a nozzle on one end and a heat generating resistor near the nozzle. Printing signals representing digital information originate an electric current pulse in a resistive layer within each ink passageway near the orifice or nozzle, causing the ink in the immediate vicinity to evaporate almost instantaneously and create a bubble. The ink at the orifice is forced out as a propelled droplet as the bubble expands. When the hydrodynamic motion of the ink stops, the process is ready to start all over again. With the introduction of a droplet ejection system based upon thermally generated bubbles, commonly referred to as the xe2x80x9cbubble jetxe2x80x9d system, the drop-on-demand ink jet printers provide simpler, lower cost devices than their continuous stream counterparts, and yet have substantially the same high speed printing capability.
The operating sequence of the bubble jet system begins with a current pulse through the resistive layer in the ink filled channel, the resistive layer being in close proximity to the orifice or nozzle for that channel. Heat is transferred from the resistor to the ink. The ink becomes superheated far above its normal boiling point, and for water based ink, finally reaches the critical temperature for bubble formation or nucleation of around 280xc2x0 C. Once nucleated, the bubble or water vapor thermally isolates the ink from the heater and no further heat can be applied to the ink. This bubble expands until all the heat stored in the ink in excess of the normal boiling point diffuses away or is used to convert liquid to vapor, which removes heat due to heat of vaporization. The expansion of the bubble forces a droplet of ink out of the nozzle, and once the excess heat is removed, the bubble collapses on the resistor. At this point, the resistor is no longer being heated because the current pulse has passed and, concurrently with the bubble collapse, the droplet is propelled at a high rate of speed in a direction towards a recording medium. The resistive layer encounters a severe cavitational force by the collapse of the bubble, which tends to erode it. Subsequently, the ink channel refills by capillary action. This entire bubble formation and collapse sequence occurs in about 10 microseconds. The channel can be refired after 100 to 500 microseconds minimum dwell time to enable the channel to be refilled and to enable the dynamic refilling factors to become somewhat dampened. Thermal ink jet processes are well known and are described in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,601,777, U.S. Pat. No. 4,251,824, U.S. Pat. No. 4,410,899, U.S. Pat. No. 4,412,224, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,532,530, the disclosures of each of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Operation of a thermal ink jet printer is described in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,849,774.
One particular form of thermal ink jet printer is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,638,337. The described printer is of the carriage type and has a plurality of printheads, each with its own ink supply cartridge, mounted on a reciprocating carriage.
There is a need to periodically clean the orifices of the ink ejecting orifices of an ink jet printer when the printer is in use. During the priming operation, which usually involves either forcing or drawing ink through the printhead, allows for drops of ink on the face of the printhead to build up. Ultimately, a build-up of ink residue forms on the printhead face. The residue can have a deleterious effect on print quality. In addition, paper fibers and other foreign material can collect on the printhead face while printing is in progress and, like the ink residue, can also have a deleterious effect on print quality.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,853,717, discloses the process of moving a printhead across a wiper blade at the end of a printing operation so that paper dust and other contaminants are scraped off the orifice plate before the printhead is capped.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,715 to Ward et al. discloses a printhead wiper for ink jet printers molded from an elastomer and including a wiping beam having a wiping edge formed at one end of the beam. The other end of the beam is integral with a base.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,158 to Nojima et al. discloses a cleaning member positioned to bear against the discharge port forming surface of an ink jet recording head, which contains the discharge ports therein, to thereby clean the discharge port forming surface. The cleaning member is formed of a material composed chiefly of hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,271, discloses a wiper blade cleaning system which has two polyurethane wiping blades of unequal lengths, but which are otherwise identical.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,555,461 discloses a wiper blade cleaning system that has at least one polyurethane wiping blade releasably mounted in a slot on a planar surface of a fixed structural member.
Known wiper blade materials have been made of robust materials. However, these materials such as urethane materials, have been known to swell in the presence of liquid inks. Other useful robust materials include fluoroelastomers, and in particular, those fluoroelastomers sold under the tradename VITON(copyright) from DuPont. However, these materials are expensive, costing up to $1,000/pound. Known materials are also spincast and cannot be molded relatively easy.
Therefore, it is desired to provide a wiper blade comprised of materials which provide for a decrease in swelling in the presence of inks. In addition, it is desired to provide a wiper blade material which is relatively cheaper than known wiper blade materials. In addition, it is desired to provide a wiper blade material which can be molded to any desired shape with relative ease.
An object of the present invention includes: an ink jet assembly comprising a) a printhead having at least one nozzle to disperse inks; b) a wiper blade assembly positioned for cleaning ink and other debris from the at least one printhead nozzles, wherein the wiper blade assembly comprises at least one wiper blade, and wherein the wiper blade comprises polyether urethane.
In addition, another object of the present invention includes: an ink jet assembly comprising a) a printhead having at least one nozzle to disperse inks; b) a wiper blade assembly positioned for cleaning ink and other debris from the at least one printhead nozzle, wherein the wiper blade assembly comprises at least one wiper blade, and wherein the wiper blade comprises diphenylmethane diisocyanate polyether urethane.
Further, an object of the present invention includes: a process for cleaning ink and other debris from a surface of at least one printhead nozzle in an ink jet assembly comprising a) dispersing inks from at least one printhead nozzle to a substrate, b) cleaning ink and other debris from the at least one printhead nozzle by positioning a wiper blade assembly comprising at least one wiper blade so that the wiper blade cleans the ink and other debris from the at least one printhead nozzle, wherein the wiper blade comprises polyether urethane.